CHAPTER II.

RELIGION IN THE PAST. THE GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF ASIA. -1. MANU, OR THE AUTHORS OF THE VEDAS.

THE first question of religious inquiry, as stated in the preceding chapter, was, "What is the origin of man and of the universe?" and this question was said to involve the question of God; that is, of the existence and the nature of God. The latter question is properly twofold: "Is there a God (or gods) as the origin of all things?" 2. "What is God?"

I.

The urgent need in these days for a calm, dispassionate review of the grounds of religious belief was said to arise from the progress of science, which will make it impossible for the educated man of the future to hold any belief on the three great heads of religious inquiry which may be in conflict with well-ascertained facts or principles in science or history. The investigations of the latest and ablest naturalists have failed to detect any thing like a direct act of creation: the various orders of animals and plants have apparently been developed one from another with secular slowness, changing through natural selection chiefly, during vast lapses of time. The "laws" of evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc., are always at work (and science can discover nothing else at work) in evolving the endless chain of being. Hence some of the more enthusiastic among modern naturalists have hastily denied the existence of a God, and have asserted that the "laws" of Nature-which, according to them, are the sole governing power in Nature - exclude the possibility of his existence. I say "hastily," because

in the first place, if this theory be true, the terminology of science must be reconsidered. The term "law," which is equivalent to "regulation" or "fixed order," implies a law-maker, regulator or fixer of that order. A "law" is only the expression of the volition or determination of some governing mind or minds. Secondly, to say that certain results always follow from certain causes, because such is the law of Nature, is to say nothing. It is no explanation, and is merely equivalent to saying that those results always follow from those.causes because they do always so follow, which is mere verbiage. The religious inquirer goes a step farther toward an explanation if he assert (rightly or wrongly) that those results always follow those causes because such is the unchanging will of an unknown intelligent Power. Only under this postulate does the term "law of Nature" possess any meaning.

Modern science, very rightly, takes account of nothing but facts. Among her facts, there is none which proves either the existence or the non-existence of a God. If the ultimate atoms of "dead" matter possess within themselves the power of evolving by natural law all this astonishing universe, including the mind of man, then, as only the greater can contain the less, these brute atoms must possess within themselves an all-but almighty power and a wisdom superior to that of man, and they must have the attributes of what we call "God." Such amazing results can only flow from an all-powerful cause, unless we assert with the Pantheists that the universe has no cause,

is its own cause, is, in short, itself that combination. of unlimited power and wisdom which we name "God." Yet this latter theory meets an insurmountable obstacle in the vast and bridgeless chasm between matter and mind. Power and wisdom cannot be attributes of dead matter.

When we look at the monad, or at the primitive organic cell, from which (or its combined form "protoplasm ") allforms of life, according to the best and latest theories,

were developed by the "law" of evolution, are we to say that this prodigious power of evolution resides in the cell as its (the cell's) own inherent and underived force, and thus give it (the cell) the almightiness of a "God"? or would it not be more natural and reasonable to suppose that this extraordinary power resides in this otherwise so feeble and helpless infinitesimal creature because it was therein implanted by the pervading life, will, and action of some intelligent and powerful being, of whom, as yet, we (scientifically) know nothing?

Again, science can give no account of the origin of life. Science asserts-perhaps proves that the life we possess was derived through human and semi-human ancestors in countless generations, from the lower creation in an infinity of successive developments, and at the earliest from this very primitive life-cell. Here is life in an almost infinite uninterrupted continuity backward. How came the life in the first monad, in the first organic cell? Science shows us no production of life from dead matter. Every smallest animalcule or plant-cell, even those developed in putrefaction or fermentation, can be shown, on the contrary, to be derived, not from the matter in which they feed and flourish, but from the life-germs of their own kind. Life, therefore, on the showing of science, is eternal in the backward direction, for any proof or argument that she can adduce to the contrary.

The physical life of the individual man is derived from his parents. There is no stop or break in the passage of the life from them to him; no moment when a new life can properly be said to begin from no life; his life is their life. But his organs, his brain, are different from theirs: hence there arises, through the difference of the instru ments through which his mind communicates with the world, a difference between his character and those of his parents. In the embryo, there is at first no noticeable difference between man and man, not only so, but there is no appreciable difference at first between the embryos

of man and those of the lower animals.' But the life in the human embryo has the capacity of reason and human intelligence; and when a human brain (and suitable instrument of reason) has been developed in that embryo in the matrix of its unconscious mother (and when birth has taken place), the human reason begins to work. Does a similar capacity reside in the life of the embryo of the lower animal? and, were it possible for that embryo to develop a human brain in the matrix of its animal mother, would it, too, reason, and become a man?

It is, of course, impossible to arrive at a positive conclusion as to this; yet it is safe to say, that at present we possess no knowledge justifying us in asserting that there is any intrinsic difference whatever between the life as existing in different human embryos at their first impregnation, and the life as existing in animal embryos at the same period. It is the difference in the subsequent development of the brain and other organs that makes, apparently, all the difference, not only between man and man, but between man and animals. It would even, perhaps, be more in accordance with the usual method of philosophy, to assume (until proof to the contrary be obtained) that life (like light, electricity, etc.) is intrinsically homogeneous and the same under all forms, and only differentiated by its various mediums or envelopes.

We here arrive at a very grand conception, not demonstrable as a fact in the present state of our knowledge, but neither extravagant, nor inharmonious with the methods of reasoning, or the known facts, of philosophy or

Professor Tyndall, in his celebrated Belfast Address, spoke of the human embryo (a twentieth of an inch only in diameter) as being little different, before fecundation, from the spore of ferns, and of both as being "matter;" he therefore gave "matter" credit for the ability to originate life. In these expressions, however, there is involved obvious logical error. Embryos, whether human or vegetable, are not "matter" pure and simple, as grains of sand are. The sand-grain truly is simple "matter," but the embryo is "matter" plus the life-principle. The sand-grain will lie for ages, and develop nothing of itself; while the life-principle in an embryo, or in a nucleated cell, possesses the dormant power of developing an entire universe of living beings from itself. An embryo may die, but the sand-grain has never lived.

science: the conception of Life, eternal and indestructible as matter is, homogeneous and identical under all its various forms, the one Life of the universe.

This conception, though here deduced from the consideration of facts which were unknown in antiquity, is one which was common to several of the great men who, at early periods, originated systems of religious philosophy.

Light, heat, attraction, electricity, are, by some of our deepest scientific thinkers, supposed to be manifestations or modes of action of an identical force, or that the first three are modes of action of the latter. It is certain that there is no light or heat anywhere in our system that is not derived directly or indirectly from the sun and stars; that the vital forces (nerve-and-brain-force, digestive power, forces of circulation, growth, etc.) the electric currents which the life uses in men, plants, and animals, are results of combustion, and that this combustion is dependent on the solar heat as its reservoir of force; that the solar heat is kept up by the impact of falling bodies; that the motion of these bodies is due to attraction, and that this impact causes a vast development of electricity. Again, in the galvanic battery we see that the chemical attraction between the acid and the metallic particles sets the electric current in motion; and in the combustion of matter in the brain, and its action upon the muscles through the nerves, an electric current is also traced. The sun is the grand reservoir for the light, heat, and electricity of our system, which are concentrated in it; its radiated heat, stored by the warmed side of the earth during the day, is thus held in reserve to support animal and vegetable life during the night, when the absence of the direct rays would otherwise cause universal death; in a similar way, its heat and light, stored by plants in the growth of fibre, is preserved by them as wood or coal after their death, and given out again, it may be, ages after, when those products are consumed.

It is in a manner somewhat similar, so far as things in